Turn a barbecue chicken into a delicious meal. By Matt Preston

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Taste.com.au - April 2012
Eat in, eat out, eat well. Look for the taste liftout on Tuesdays in the Herald Sun, Courier Mail and Daily Telegraph, on Wednesdays in the Adelaide Advertiser, and in Perth’s Sunday Times.

Play a game of pantry perfect match and delicious dishes will follow. Matt Preston reports.

This goes with that at Sussan always sounded like dating advice rather that an ad for a clothing store but it could also have been a suitable jingle for the kitchen as there are undoubtedly flavours and ingredients that work best together. Many of these are now so obvious we need not dwell on them – tomato and basil; strawberries and cream; coffee and chocolate – but what about unlikely combinations that come as a bit of a surprise like leeks with nutmeg, ham with pineapple or peanut butter with apricot or strawberry jam?

WEIRD AND WONDERFUL

Uncovering the reasons behind these unions excites me as much as finding out what makes a Kardashian marriage tick – or not.

This interest was sparked by interviewing UK food scientist Dr Peter Barham who works with UK chef Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck. Peter said all food was made up of aroma or flavour compounds and the reason certain unlikely flavours worked together was they usually shared elements of those compounds, so my family tradition of rubbing lamb with garlic and coffee worked because the three shared flavour elements and were compatible.

Heston, who visits Australia in May for a series of live shows, modestly puts part of his success down to discovering this science.

MIX AND MATCH

Recently I was discussing flavour ideas with two pastry whizzes, Darren Purchese and Ian Burch. They put me on the Foodpairings website, a Belgian site that provides the science behind some of Darren and Ian's more wacky but delicious cake combinations such as gin, yoghurt, sponge and orange, or roast pumpkin, milk chocolate, maple syrup and bacon.

Food pairings are fascinating. We all know grilled beef goes well with parsley, or butter, or french fries – but pairing it with clams, popcorn or even white chocolate? And while cucumber has an obvious affinity with yoghurt and trout, it also apparently has more in common with toast, dark chocolate, bourbon, peking duck and strawberries. This goes some way to explaining why I could never dismiss out of hand that '80s salad of sliced strawberry and cucumber. Try it, it's good.

MAKE OVER YOUR FAVOURITES

What I love is how this science can put unexpected twists on old favourites. For example, click here for suggestions for what to do with something as familiar as roast chook.

It goes with sage and onion stuffing; peas or roast pumpkin; thyme, honey or garlic; bacon and ham; paprika or mustard; or tarragon, but what about some more unusual pairings?

Recently, I made a wonderful crust for chicken using popcorn pulsed to a rough crumb. You just pound chook breast flat between two sheets of clingfilm (as for schnitzels) then dip them in flour, then egg, then popcorn crumb and oven bake at 180C until cooked. I served these with Caribbean-style spicy baked bananas and mango salsa. It was like a fiesta on the plate – and all inspired by the fact that mango, butter, bananas, popcorn and peanuts share flavour compounds.

I've been thinking about what else I could do to take that chook from the hot counter into unfamiliar but assuredly delicious territory.

At the most simple level it was to make a gravy. I sliced 300g of pine mushrooms and fried them in a little butter with a teaspoon of freshly ground coriander seed. Once the mushrooms were slippery I threw in a handful of craisins (dried cranberries). When softened and cooked, I took the mushrooms out of the pan and reserved them. I fried two teaspoons of tamarind in the pan, then deglazed it with a cup of chicken stock. Leaving it on a low heat I reduced it by half to make a rich but sour gravy. I served the chook with the mushrooms and this gravy. It was delicious.

Slightly more exotic was to serve the roast chook with a potato mash and carrots with a simple chicken veloute gravy that was infused with mandarin peel. I also added some roast peaches to the plate. To make the gravy you make a brown roux by cooking a large knob of butter with a tablespoon of plain flour until the resulting paste goes a golden brown. Then you stir in chicken stock until the gravy reaches the required thickness. For me that's about two cups of stock. Then grate in some fresh mandarin zest to finish. The peaches can be grilled if you don't want to use the oven – but obviously if you are roasting your own chook then roast the peaches – and the carrots and the potatoes, too, to make life easier.